The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent it is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure. Unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in the present disclosure and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Wireless mobile devices (e.g., user equipment, or “UE” devices) may communicate with each other “indirectly,” e.g., via intermediaries such as base stations over a wireless wide area network (“WWAN”). Some mobile devices may be configured to communicate directly with other mobile devices, e.g., via device-to-device (“D2D”) communication. D2D communications may be used, e.g., when mobile devices initiate communication with each other while within direct wireless range of each other. D2D communication may be implemented using different platforms, such as 802.11 (“WiFi”), BlueTooth®, near field communication (“NFC”), Long Term Evolution (LTE) communication, FlashLinq by Qualcomm®, and so forth.
In some instances, wireless service providers may be interested in using D2D communications to send advertisements from one mobile device (e.g., a D2D advertiser) to another (e.g., a UE). For example, a base station may allocate a particular resource (e.g., communication channel or bandwidth) to a D2D advertiser, on which the D2D advertiser may broadcast advertisements to other mobile devices (UEs) that may be within D2D communication range. However, if there are no UEs within the D2D communication range that may be interested in receiving (“listening to”) advertisements, the D2D advertiser may waste power and allocated resources (e.g., bandwidth). What is more, the D2D advertiser, while broadcasting advertisements that may not be in demand, may unnecessarily interfere with communications between other wireless devices in the same coverage area. The resource and power waste and interference issues may exacerbate as the number of D2D advertisers increases and, consequently, an increased number of advertisements are broadcasted in a particular coverage area.